Description:

The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics program presents

A Montgomery Lectcure

with

Angira Patel, MD, MPH                                                                              

Pediatric Cardiologist, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago
Assistant Professor, Pediatrics-Cardiology and Medical Education
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Ethical Issues Surrounding Pediatric Heart Transplantation

This talk will describe the history of pediatric heart transplantation including technological advances and improved survival in children. We will discuss contemporary ethical challenges related to informed consent and decision making. Empirical results of a physician survey will be presented and used as a jumping point to discuss future directions.

Description:

The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities and Bioethics program presents

a Montgomery Lecture

with

Catherine Belling, PhD
Associate Professor, Medical Education
Faculty, Medical Humanities & Bioethics Graduate Program
Member, Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Ugly? Aesthetic Diversity and Affective Discipline

This presentation considers aesthetic diversity in two senses: differences in appearance (that may or may not be associated with disability or advantage), and differences, social and individual, in responding to the looks of others. The initial affective reaction to seeing, whether attraction, curiosity, or revulsion, is usually followed by a willed disciplining of the gaze—“It’s rude to stare.” Drawing upon Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s theoretical work in Staring (2009), this presentation will focus on the case of Lizzie Velasquez, a motivational speaker who has Marfan Syndrome, examining her response to the ethics that discipline (or fail to discipline) what Garland-Thomson calls our primal “hunger for and horror of the stare.”

Description:

The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities and Bioethics program presents

A Montgomery Lecture

with

Candice T. Player, JD, PhD, MPhil
Assistant Professor of Law
Northwestern Pritzker School of Law

“Death with Dignity” and Mental Disorder

States and nations are grappling with physician-assisted death and its boundaries. In the United States, euthanasia is universally prohibited and a handful of states have sanctioned physician-assisted death for competent adults with terminal illnesses. In Europe, physician-assisted suicide is broader. The Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland permit both euthanasia and physician-assisted death for competent non-terminal patients, whether the cause of the patient’s suffering is psychological or somatic. Indeed all three countries allow physician-assisted dying for psychiatric patients without an underlying somatic disorder. Still, legal scholars, bioethicists, and psychiatrists are divided over whether someone with a mental disorder should have access to physician-assisted suicide. Some object to physician-assisted suicide itself, while others support a right to assisted suicide for people with terminal illnesses, but are reluctant to extent that right to people with mental illnesses on the ground that doctors cannot be certain that they are making a competent decision. In this talk, I argue that people with mental disorders should have the right to access physician-assisted death, no less than people with terminal or non-terminal medical conditions.

Description:

The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities and Bioethics program presents

A Montgomery Lecture

with

Eric Hengstebeck, PhD Candidate, English
MH&B Graduate Affiliate

Desiring Sleep: On the Bioethical Dimensions of Managing Somnolence

This talk explores the unique bioethical challenges posed by sleep in both the clinical setting, for patients as well as clinicians, and as a public health issue. Examples of these challenges will be drawn from literature, film, and popular culture, with the aim of developing a sleep-critical paradigm for understanding the healthy management of somnolence within and without the clinical setting.

Description:

The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics presents

A Montgomery Lecture

with

Kathy Johnson Neely, MD, MA
Northwestern Memorial Hospital Ethics Committee Chair
Northwestern Memorial Hospital Ethics Consultant
Attending Physician, Palliative Medicine
Associate Professor of Medicine, Northwestern University
     Feinberg School of Medicine

Clinical Ethics Cases from the NMH Archives

In this presentation Dr. Neely will offer a sampling of diverse ethics case consultations from NMH over her past 15 years as ethics committee chair and consultant. These cases illustrate the complexities imposed by medical decision-making for a person who has no capacity to do so for him/herself. Additionally, they underscore the ways in which evolving clinical practice, policy and law can buttress or hamstring ethical analysis and action. The goal of this presentation is to familiarize attendees with the application of ethics to everyday practice of medicine in a tertiary care academic medical center.